In 1807 Napoleon Bonaparte created the Duchy of Warsaw from the Polish lands that had been ceded to France by Prussia. His Civil Code was enforced in the new Duchy too and, unlike the Catholic Church, it allowed the dissolution of marriage by divorce. This book sheds new light on the application of Napoleonic divorce regulations in the Polish lands between 1808-1852. Unlike what has been argued so far, this book demonstrates that divorces were happening frequently in 19th century Poland and even with the same rate as in France. In addition to the analysis of the Napoleonic divorce law, the reader is provided with a fully comprehensive description of parties as well as courts and officials involved in divorce proceedings, their course and the grounds for divorce.
Both marriages and divorces, understood as the dissolution of a legally contracted marriage, are widespread throughout modern-day European societies. The fate of both institutions was, however, diametrically different in the centuries following the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West. While marriage has always enjoyed popularity, divorce in the past was a rare occurrence and, in some regions and times, it was non-existent altogether. In the second millennium of our era, in the territories dominated by the Roman Church, divorce had been marginalized"--
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